This invention relates generally to connections between electronic equipment, particularly to the connection between a hand held portable computer and an expansion unit for the computer.
Hand held computers have been developed primarily for the recording of information during field work, in a vehicle or in other endeavors involving movement from place to place. Their uses have included use by delivery people recording the delivery or pick-up of inventory from a truck, use by inventory personnel in a warehouse or store, and other route type uses which could include reading of utility meters, etc. A copending application entitled "Hand Held Computer", filed concurrently with this application, assigned to the same assignee as the present invention and incorporated into this application by reference, discloses a hand held computer which has a large screen covering much of the area of the face of the computer, is thin in profile and light in weight and has no alphabetical or numerical keyboard. The hand held computer has a writing stylus or pen for writing on the screen, tethered to the computer housing by a cord which may carry a conductive wire, although in some applications no wire is needed.
On such a computer, or on another type of hand held or portable computer, it is sometimes necessary or desirable to connect the computer to a further component which will add more computing power, more random access memory (RAM), more disk storage or additional battery power. For example, it might be desirable to connect the clipboard computer to a peripheral or expansion module having a hard disk drive or perhaps one or more floppy disk drives, or the peripheral component may have a faster and more powerful main computing board and/or an additional battery pack. Often the connection to such an expansion module will be desirable and convenient after the clipboard computer has been brought back to an office or base operating point.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a connecting structure for attaching a hand held computer to a peripheral component which will add another feature or more battery power or computing power or disk memory, etc. in a way that unites the two components into essentially a single unit which is attractive and easily used, and in which the connection between the two components is very easily and reliably made.